Thursday, 25 February 2010

We're shocked, shocked I tell you

Richard Dawkins built a forum on his website for atheists to interact with one another, sharing the results of their free-thinking. The results were consistently and persistently crude and revolting. As a result Dawkins has felt compelled to basically close the forum down as a venue for open discussion. The natives reacted to this news by taking it as a further opportunity to show more of the fruits of their Dawkins-inspired philosophy. Now quoth the startled mad ex-professor:

"Surely there has to be something wrong with people who can resort to such over-the-top language, over-reacting so spectacularly to something so trivial. Even some of those with more temperate language are responding to the proposed changes in a way that is little short of hysterical. Was there ever such conservatism, such reactionary aversion to change, such vicious language in defence of a comfortable status quo? What is the underlying agenda of these people? How can anybody feel that strongly about something so small? Have we stumbled on some dark, territorial atavism? Have private fiefdoms been unwittingly trampled?

Something wrong with people? With atheists, who've been freed from that "root of all evil", namely religion, and who live in a rational, scientific, delusion-free zone? How could that be? Especially when all those God-less regimes which the atheists built in the 20th century - Stalin, Lenin, Pol Pot, Tsetung, Hoxha, etc. - were all utopian paradises. This is such a surprise! How could this have happened?

Dawkins a-theology has no answer to that question, so he lamely pins the blame on a nebulous impersonal non-cause, "Internet culture":

Be that as it may, what this remarkable bile suggests to me is that there is something rotten in the Internet culture that can vent it. If I ever had any doubts that RD.net needs to change, and rid itself of this particular aspect of Internet culture, they are dispelled by this episode.

Because it couldn't just be the inevitable results of encouraging godless thinking, of course. You naughty, naughty "Internet culture". Curious how atheist websites seem to attract a much higher proportion of "Internet culture" than the rest of the Internet....?